North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Lindsay Barwegen Heads Into Open Water
6/4/2006 12:00:00 AM | Swimming
June 4, 2006
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH - NC State distance swimmer Lindsay Barwegen thinks she's ready for the longest race of her life. She's not really sure, because she's never swum 25,000 meters before.
For anyone who can't do quick conversions from the metric system, that's 15.5 miles in the water.
Barwegen, a rising senior swimmer from Highland Village, Texas, will compete Tuesday in the United States Swimming's Open Water Nationals, a grueling six-hour competition in the ocean and intra-coastal waterway near Fort Myers, Fla., which features just six other racers willing to brave the distance.
Barwegen is swimming for one of two spots on the U.S. National team, which will compete in Naples, Italy, in September and in Australia next March. Making the team would also be a benefit for Barwegen's hopes of competing in the 2008 Shanghai China Olympics, the first time that open-water swimming will be an official Olympic event.
Open-water swimming isn't for the queasy. It's a no-holds-barred kind of race, with few rules other than "Don't touch the escort boat." Barwegen, who grew up near Dallas, fell in love with the open water at the age of 12. She continued to compete in the pool, however, and was a highly decorated junior swimmer when she arrived at NC State three years ago. She will enter the fall as a co-captain and top swimmer for the Wolfpack women.
Last year, during her summer break, Barwegen finished fifth in the 10,000 meter race at the Open-Water Nationals, recording a time of 2:14:32. This year, she wanted to try the longer distance, even though she's never gone farther than eight miles, even in training.
"I hope to finish in less than six hours," Barwegen said.
To hear Barwegen tell it, open-water swimming is part racing, part bar fight. It's the closest thing swimming has to a contact sport, outside of water polo.
"There really are no rules," Barwegen said. "You can get in a fight, you can punch people, push them down to the bottom. You can do whatever you want. In every race I have been in, I have seen or been in a fight. I have seen a girl trying to rip another girl's suit off.
"People rip your cap and goggles off and throw them across the water. Everyone is throwing elbows."
There is also wildlife involved.
"Last year, during the entire swim, I could reach out and touch dolphins," Barwegen said.
When the Wolfpack swimming and diving team went on its training trip to Boca Raton, Fla., in December, Barwegen and two of her teammates did an ocean swim in which they saw sting rays and sand sharks. And last year, just weeks after the Open-Water Nationals, there were two shark attacks near where the course is laid out in the Gulf of Mexico.
Each of the seven racers in the 25,000-meter race will be followed by an escort kayak, for coaching, support and sustenance. NC State associate head coach for women's swimming Jacqui McLaughlin will be in Barwegen's boat, to give her food and monitor her progress throughout the race. Barwegen will have to drink four to six ounces of fluid every half hour and eat a banana, a gel-pack or a smoothie every hour or so.
So it takes a huge amount of mental and physical toughness just to complete the race.
"Even some of the best 25K swimmers in the world struggle with this event at times, depending on the conditions of the course," McLaughlin said. "For somebody to come into this event new, I think there are a lot of challenges both physically and mentally.
"But if any athlete that I have ever coach can do this, it's Lindsay Barwegen. She is one of the toughest athletes I have ever coached."
Barwegen, an honor-roll student majoring in textile and apparel management, proved that at the end of her high school career when she competed with a severely damaged nerve in her shoulder, though she didn't know it at the time. The injury was diagnosed during her freshman year at NC State and she had surgery to repair it. Since then, she has been one of the most accomplished women's swimmers on the team, and enters the fall as team captain for the second consecutive year.
Barwegen, the Wolfpack women's swimming team's most valuable player the last two years, isn't the only NC State swimmer competing in the open-water nationals this weekend. Rising sophomores Lucy Lindsey and Cole Yarborough made their open-water debuts on Sunday in the 10,000 meter race, while rising sophomore Erica Smith and incoming freshman Nick Brittis of Bluffton, S.C., competed in Friday's 5,000-meter race.
"It's just something I wanted to try, because we did it on our training trip to Florida in the winter," Lindsey said.
They trained all spring with Barwegen, taking out the lane ropes at the Carmichael Natatorium to help simulate open water. They even practiced elbowing each other every now and then.
"I really enjoy college swimming and racing in the pool," Barwegen said. "But I wish open-water swimming was a college sport too."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
